. “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon

We again were about the last peregrinos out the door, but this morning Jessy is not feeling well, so we go slow. Another flat this morning, I must be doing something wrong to the tires, the patch the Italian gave last night did not hold up. The Irish man told me that the patches without glue as rubbish. He tells me to use one of his, so as I’m fixing the inner tube I buy breakfast for Jessy at the albergue, for three Euros you can have a pretty big breakfast, fried eggs and all.

A tiny village at the entrance of the Galician province

This was a good early break for Jessy after taking her medicine. I have now changed 5 flats in 24 hours when a guy from Germany tells me he has not had a single flat since leaving his hometown, he tells me to stay away from the trails and ride the roads, I tell him that the Camino is mainly on trails and that is what we are here to experience; he agreed. Finally at about 9 pm we took off slow, still a little cold we put on our gloves to take on the hills. Today we have a hard climb from Trabadeto to O Cebreiro which is where there is a monk’s monastery. We rode out slowly and Jessica felt better afte the medicine kicked in. It took us over 2 hours to climb 13 kilometers, from 750 meters to 1300 in altitude. When we reached the top we walked in and asked for our stamp, to my surprise the monk asked”who would like a stamp?”. I sort of froze, thinking that he thought I was getting a stamp for someone else that maybe got turned away earlier. In seconds I realized that I had to state my name as well as Jessica’s. He then asked where are you from? We replied and he gave us a smile asking us where we had started our pilgrimage. We sat in the church for a while a took a couple of pieces of bread that was available for us.

The church where we received out stamp

Afterwards we went into the shops and bought Carmen and Gabby earrings and a pendant representing the Camino. We walked into a very nice looking retreat where we saw the monk that had just stamped our passport earlier having his meal. He acknowledged us and we sat down to have our lunch, Jessy and I shared the pilgrims special, which was a salad for each of us, Jessica had pasta with a meat that looked like a thick bacon and I had the patatas with fried eggs.

It was now time to head down the mountain; we needed 15 kilometers to the next town. It was again hard on the brakes, at least mine. Jessy loved flying down the mountains, I had to keep reminding her to slow down, but she loved the speed and would always leave me behind.

That evening we rode into Saria at about 5pm, we looked for the albergue municipal when we came across a very nice albergue for only 8 Euros. It was very spacious. We went out to have dinner just a few steps away from the albergue. While having dinner a church group came out to sing to the peregrinos, they sang a number of songs and at the end of their show thank us for visiting their town, they never asked for a contribution.